Caliban played by James Garnon updates2016-12-09T15:22:19+00:00Zend_Feed_Writerhttp://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discovery-space/adopt-an-actor/archive/caliban-played-by-james-garnonShakespeare's Globe Theatrehttp://www.shakespearesglobe.com2013-06-25T00:00:00+00:002013-06-25T00:00:00+00:00http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discovery-space/adopt-an-actor/archive/caliban-played-by-james-garnon/performanceJames Garnonhttp://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discovery-space/adopt-an-actor/archive/caliban-played-by-james-garnon

Rachel Ely: So, how was opening night?

James Garnon: It was fine, I think! First
preview for me was quite stressful, actually, because of the
costume changes we discussed and the way things sort of altered,
and I threw up three times on opening night. I think it was food
poisoning, but it might have been nerves. I don’t get nervous, or
if I do get nervous it doesn’t manifest itself in a way that I’m
aware of. So it could have been my system was absolutely terrified
and made me throw up, whilst I had no idea of it at the time.

RE: Offstage, I hope?

JG: Offstage, yeah! In the middle of the show
as well, which is also why I don’t think it’s nerves, because it
was during the show, rather than before. But I seem to remember it
was fine, and most of the previews where we jiggled about with bits
and bobs, but I think it was all fairly easy. We carried on playing
with, as indeed we still are in the clown scenes, mucking about and
trying things, and dumping jokes that weren’t working, and putting
in different things . . . but it’s fine.

RE: Well, how was press night?

JG: Press night was fine, as it always is here
really, because there’s a lot of other companies in the building
,the other actors come and watch. It’s a very supportive . . . the
press night. A lot of the audience that are there are aware and
have booked because it’s press night, so it’s a very positive
space. And as we’ve said, because the audience are such an
important part of the play. It’s kind of good – you have this weird
mix on press night. A bunch of audience that are really just there
to write notes and criticise, and then a large section of the
audience who are there to enjoy and support. So it’s a weird one. I
never really like press night in that respect because it doesn’t
really give you a fair reflection of what actually is going on. Two
shows later you probably find out where the show actually is. Early
preview audiences are very excited because they know they’re seeing
something fresh and they’re the first people to see it, so they’re
very invested and excited in seeing it. Then as you get further on
into previews you start getting audiences who aren’t quite sure
because the reviews haven’t come out yet and maybe they’ve heard a
couple of things, but they don’t quite know yet whether or not they
like it because they haven’t been told whether they like it or not
yet. And then you get to press night and everyone’s very excited
because they’re there on a special night, and then audiences start
coming in and for a while are influenced heavily by what they’ve
read, and depending on what they’ve read they either act either in
concert with or reaction to what they’ve read. And then as you get
further on down the line that’s all disappeared – people are back
to just watching the play.

RE: How have the Globe’s distractions, like
helicopters or birds or audiences in general, been affecting your
performance, if at all?

JG: Hugely. I’m always quite keen
acknowledging when the loud planes and things enter in, I quite
like it. I think it’s unhelpful if the audience are experiencing
something that we’re not acknowledging. But it’s a kind of hard
game to work out when and how to use them, and we realised quite
early on that the planes in the first scene weren’t so helpful –
the first scene with Trinculo and Stephano – and if we did
acknowledge a plane in that section they weren’t quite ready for
it. But when we’re in the drunk scene – after the audience have
gone out for an interval and had a little gin and tonic or whatever
– they’re much happier with that sort of breaking it up. So we
found it was better to do it in those scenes. However it does still
need to happen at a good moment for it to be useful, and we have no
rule to what the things are going to be. Sometimes the planes are
Prospero’s spirits and thus very frightening, and sometimes planes
and helicopters are just weird insects, which then leads on to ‘the
isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs’. If you’ve
acknowledged something weird that we’ve all got freaked out, that’s
handy. Similarly we’ve had babies crying, that happened one night
when I was doing Caliban’s soliloquy, and I cast the audience in
that quite often – not always but quite often – cast them as
spirits of the island and Prospero’s spirits. And when a baby cried
that was one of the spirits coming to annoy me. And just as I was
focussing on it his parents took the baby out of the room, which
was disappointing until my very next line, which was ‘nor lead me
like a fire brand in the dark out of my way’, which sort of seemed
appropriate. So you had the baby noise going off and you think
‘wow’ – if you make yourself available to happy accidents,
accidents become happy accidents. So that’s all been rather
satisfying.

RE: What is your favourite moment in the
play?

JG: One of my favourite moments – if you really
want one of my favourite moments? One of my favourite moments is
actually when I’m under the gabardine on stage, and I’m sitting on
the stage, and I hear Trevor [Fox, Trinculo] come on and – I don’t
know what on earth Trevor does, I haven’t got a clue – but the
audience titter, and they titter at about four things – I know he
produces a fish, I think they titter at the fish. But I don’t know
which the fish moment is, I don’t know when they’re laughing when
they’ve just sort of seen him. And he empties out his codpiece
which is soaking wet over somebody, and you always know when that
moment is, because no matter what laugher has happened that’s
always sort of very big. And it’s very pleasing hearing, you know,
their shock – it’s just a lovely thing to listen to.

You are in performances right now for The Tempest, but
I wanted to ask you: what is it like to do tech week?

James Garnon:

In a normal theatre, it’s where you get acquainted with the
lighting and the costumes and things like that. But obviously, we
don’t have those sorts of issues here. But it really is just you
get used to the costume and you get used to the space. And in our
case because we’ve got quite a large thrust, quite a circular
space, there’s quite a lot built on it that we couldn’t really play
with in the rehearsal room. Because of the developments that were
going on at the Globe, we were working in a rehearsal room that
doesn’t actually correlate to the size of the stage. So, it comes
down to the amount of room that we suddenly had and started to play
with all the different things. And, in my case: looking at all the
costume or rather having massive problems once discovering the
costume we had envisaged having didn’t materialise in a workable
form. So, most of my tech was spent slowly losing confidence in the
costume that I had or the bits that were being provided for me. I
had a mask that should be made and fitted for my head but it didn’t
move in any way and removed any facial expression and was just
effectively a mask. Fortunately, I didn’t have to cut that because
it was cut for me by the director and other people. And then the
bodysuit that I had left never looked anything more than like a
kind of Lycra bodysuit. I lost any confidence in it really becoming
a useable form in the space. Things have to either look real or
they have to be implied. Either the audience does the work or it
has to look completely real. And anything that falls in between,
anything that looks theatrical, for someone like Caliban, is a very
dangerous thing to do. It’s alright for spirits and magical
creatures and things like that. Magic is something we don’t really
know about so that could be anything [and] that could be any form
of theatricality you ask it to be. But someone like Caliban, who
isn’t supernatural, who is real, has to look real. So, I slowly,
kind of pointed out that I didn’t think the costume was going to
work in the way that it was envisaged. So, we had a kind of massive
crisis. And it’s not because anyone didn’t do their work or didn’t
do their job, it just didn’t quite come off. So, we quickly had to
think of something else, mainly a make-up solution. And the make-up
department was amazing, fantastic. They came up with a solution
that fitted the designer’s requirements, the designer’s vision in
terms of keeping Caliban looking like the marble, looking like the
pillars, but also something that looked more real. The shame is
that in the process, I spent six weeks imagining that what had been
drawn and what was on the wall was effectively like an enormous
devil suit with a tail and a fairly horrific-looking red devil-type
person, and that didn’t happen. So, then you have to quickly
readjust. If you’re just you, covered in mud and red make-up and
stuff, Caliban falls back into being something closer to a feral
child or something or some damaged person and that changes
the way that you approach it very rapidly. And then, you suddenly
have to do different types of physicality and the animal work that
I hadn’t really done because there’d been a large devil suit where
it would have seemed fairly irrelevant. So, the whole thing evolved
through tech week. Halfway through tech, I think we dumped that.
And by the first night I think it was the first time I’d actually
been in the full make-up. It’s all quite stressful. My back went a
little bit at one point – I think that was just tension. And my
voice went a little bit because the make-up is very cold and I
effectively was naked. I am now naked, just covered in makeup with
a prosthetic bottom. And if you apply clay or mud to your body it
actually cools you down. I suddenly understood exactly why pigs and
hippos roll around in mud because it cools your body down
unbelievably as it dries. So, I was phenomenally cold and that has
very bad effects on your voice. It’s very difficult to warm up
properly. So, it’s been, I think, probably the most challenging
three weeks in my entire career.

RE:

Well, beyond the costume, what have been some of the other
challenges that you’ve approached in this production?

JG:

Nothing unusual, there are just the idiosyncratic things about
this space, reacquainting yourself principally with the helicopters
and the aeroplanes and things like that when you’re on a magical
island . We’re okay in the comic scenes, really, because you can
use them in a way that other characters in other scenes can’t
quite. I started stopping and watching them as if I presumed
they’re something Prospero’s dreamed up to come and torment me. And
then there’s all the relationships one has with the audience and
finding ways of playing with them. Because the game’s a shared game
at the Globe, what you’re creating is something that’s created
between the actors and the audience, and you do it together. And if
you onstage ignore stuff that the audience are very aware of it
breaks that trust. And the audience like it if you share their
reality. If their reality involves an enormous aeroplane going over
the top, sometimes it’s nice to acknowledge that, just as when it
rains it’s nice to acknowledge that you know it’s raining in some
way, then the audience relax, and the tension that is created by
the unexpected event dissipates and everyone gets on with the
story. But if you ignore it, it’s like an elephant in the room.

RE:

In tech, and I guess in previews as well, are there scenes
you’re still finding difficult to unlock?

JG:

I’m very bad at this, aren’t I, because I always say ‘yeah, all
of them, or none of them’. I don’t think we’ve cracked any of them.
I would be appalled if I was sitting here saying ‘yes, there’s just
one, we’re going to unlock that one then we’ll be there’, because
that’s nonsense. The reason these plays are endlessly done is
because there’s no right way of doing them. Hopefully we’ll keep
finding something interesting in every single one. There are scenes
that we think we’re comfortable with, we’ll go through an
uncomfortable phase, we’ll find something new. But I think as a
three, and I’m talking about the comic scenes now, I think we’re
quite comfortable with our level of play and where we’re at. And
some nights stuff doesn’t work, and sometimes nights it does, and
it’s a little bit of a balancing game.

RE:

My last question is, what was it like to see the play come
together as a whole, for the first time on stage?

JG:

Well the terrible thing of course is that I haven’t. The nature
of this play is that it’s so split up. The court may wander around
on their own, and me and the boys we walk around on our own, and
really for most of the evening Prospero, Miranda, and Ferdinand are
another little group, with Ariel flitting in around amongst all the
scenes. We’re all quite split up by virtue of the fact that I’m
under a lot of makeup and I have to keep getting it touched up, and
I’ve barely seen the rest of the play. I’m having makeup put on
while the beginning happens and when I come off I get it all
touched up and get warm. I think as a machine we’re still finding
our feet. We’ve worked a lot on stuff in isolation and then we come
and play with the audience, and the audience brings something and
we bring something, so there’s a lot more learning to be done here
than there is in a dark theatre. So I’m quite happy where we
are.

Fine! Although, I don’t feel like we’ve done an awful lot of
them. But I always sort of feel that. I suppose because I find I
always get to tech not knowing the jig at all. And I only really
work out how on earth it works during tech. That’s because I’m
quite slow at learning these things. But I think it’s in quite a
good place – I don’t know. It’s finished; we know what it looks
like. It comes out of various bits that are already in the show, in
terms of the masque and there’s some gestures and things that are
in the masque. So, there’s quite a lot of movement and dance within
that dance section. So, then really, the jig is picking that back
out. It’s very weird (jigs) always, because you feel what you’re
doing is quite simple, but the combined effect of lots of people
doing a series of... sort of like doing harmonies in a piece of
music. What you’re singing is quite simple, but the overall effect
sounds rather complicated. Similarly, with the jig, you’re doing
stuff that’s relatively simple but the overall effect of everyone
doing their own little bits suddenly makes everything look very
elaborate.

RE:

What role does music play in this production?

JG:

At the moment, I’m uncertain because we don’t have any of the
musicians with us, at the moment, in the room. Clearly, the music
is connected with magic in the play generally. But there’s a number
of bits of confusion that I have. I think at the moment my song
(when Caliban sings) is underscored, which, at the moment, I think
sounds very weird because I don’t know why it would be. And I
think, at the moment, Stephano’s song (as he enters) are
underscored, which strikes me as a bit weird because later on we
notice music being played by Ariel and go, “ooh” and all get rather
freaked out. So, it seems a bit weird that that’s being fed in as a
texture. But, as I say, I don’t really know how settled that is. As
I understand it, music in the show (and in the play in general) is
associated with magic. But that’s not to say that we aren’t, as an
audience, able to be more metatheatrical about things and
understand that it’s a play. But those balances are things for a
director and musical director to work out.

RE:

How have your initial impressions of your character changed or
been confirmed since the start of the process?

JG:

I’ve gone down a long, circuitous journey with it. And I had
some very firm ideas before I started that sort of got jettisoned
because of the way the design was. Then I immersed myself in lots
of thinking about the devil and Caliban’s relationship with devils.
I’ve read a lot about renaissance and medieval devils. And then, of
course, you sort of drop that – like everything – and then that
falls away. And then it’s been formed and you find things in the
play that seem to be helpful. But then, ultimately, they all get
dropped as pieces of irrelevant research and academe that have no
real bearing on the reality of playing scenes with people. But it’s
still sort of bedrock. And I’m finding him more sympathetic again.
There was a point at which I was thinking, “Well now, screw it!
I’ll just be bad. He is just bad. His motives are all bad.” But
then, one stops doing that. And anyway, you can’t play that. It
would be a mistake to overtly play evil, even if Caliban’s motives
are all bad. So, I’ve softened on him and I’ve gotten kinder to
him. He’s also seeming to be both more stupid and more intelligent,
by which I mean (intelligent is wrong) stupider but swifter in
thought, like a dog can be, you know, not very bright. One can want
somebody dead and be in love with them and flip between the two
things much more stupidly and much more quickly and cleverly than
I. Or that is what I am thinking of doing at the moment. And it
hadn’t really occurred to me before, meaning that Caliban is much
more goldfish-y. It seems that Stephano is quite goldfish-y, but
one could allow Caliban also to be quite goldfish-y, in terms of
having one idea and dropping it, another idea and dropping it,
another idea and dropping it.

I just want to get stuff more up to pace. It means you can start
imagining the audience. Because I’ve always thought that at the
Globe the biggest character in any play is the audience, you don’t
really know what you have until the audience is there. And it’s as
well to start thinking about them without actually knowing how
they’re going to play. And that’s having a consciousness of how
they might react to various bits, having a consciousness of talking
to different levels of audience: the audience that are in the gods,
the audience that are in the middle gallery, the audience that are
in the lower gallery (sitting), and then the people in the
groundlings. One can chart a geography of thought amongst them and
know, in advance, who you want to talk to at different points and
cast them: cast the different tiers and things. I’ve always thought
that’s quite helpful in this space because one of the best ways of
keeping everybody engaged and warm in the room is to make sure that
you make connections all the way around fairly fluidly and
constantly. Meeting people’s eyes everywhere and finding reasons to
be looking and speaking seemingly to yourself or to other
characters whilst also talking directly into somebody’s eyes
somewhere else around the room. So, that’s something else that
one’s starting to put into one’s imagination because you don’t want
to be out there dealing with that without preparation, it seems to
me.

RE:

What have been the highs and the lows of the past few weeks?

JG:

I don’t know. The high is that I think the show is in really
good shape. I think it looks really nice. I love getting to a point
where you feel a real affection for a production or a show and a
concern for it because you like it and you think it’s working and
you think you’ve made some good work and you hope that people like
it. And that’s a nice sensation: to feel protective of it on some
level in your mind. There are some really beautiful things
happening in it. One of the nice things about this one [this show]
is that it’s very broken up: the courts are over there and we don’t
see them rehearsing and we, the clowns, are over here and they
never see us. So, all the groups are kept separate and then, when
you come to them and you see the whole thing together, you see some
really lovely things that other people have made and you go, “oh
wow! This is really beautiful.” It’s such a weird play. It’s so
endlessly peculiar. And it looks like you can understand it and you
can’t. And you think something very profound is happening but you
can’t quite work out what the profundity is. And that’s all there,
so that’s lovely! And on the down side, I suppose I’ve made various
decisions about the way I move and that means that my legs are
really hurting. I mean, it’s much more fluid and whatever seems
appropriate: to being on one’s stomach at various points like a
snake and to be a dog or to be a monkey or to be something crouchy
or to be something jumpy or strong or swift or uncomfortable. So,
I’m doing all of those things, but it just seems that a huge amount
of it is being done by my major thigh muscles.

My name is Rachel Ely and this is the second interview with
James Garnon, who is playing Caliban in the upcoming Globe
production of The Tempest.

So my question is: what have you been doing in rehearsals so
far?

James Garnon:

Rehearsing! We are just working through the play. As far as the
scenes I’m involved in, because Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano have
a lot of comic business – there’s the monster that they turn into
with the gabardine, then there’s a whole drunk scene – and, of
course, they are the comedic scenes of the play. Well, the more
comedic scenes of the play. So, I suppose, at the moment, we are
more worrying about the technical difficulties of getting the
monster to work and the kind of practicalities of working out
business as and where there might be business. That seems to be
more or less what’s happening more than anything else. And trying
to make it as fluid and as fleet as it should be, which is another
way of saying other forms of blocking, as well. We did spend a lot
of time early on in rehearsal working on textual things and trying
to work out what was going on, and now we’re spending more time
working on the actual physical shape of the thing and presumably
that will then iron out in the next phase.

RE:

Which relationships in the play do you think are important to
your character and why?

JG:

All of them! Caliban’s relationship to Prospero and Miranda is
incredibly important because they discovered him; they are his
surrogate parents – she is his surrogate sister, he has attempted
to rape her, there is an enormous amount of conflicting problems
there. Having said which, having been rejected by them and now
being full of unending loathing for them both and a determination
to destroy them which seems to be there, which is an adolescent
flip-side of love. He also now has a very, very much more active
relationship with all the other spirits on the island who torture
him. He spends more time talking about them almost than talking
about Miranda and Prospero, and how much he’s tortured and hurt by
them on the island. But then his relationship with Stefano and
Trinculo is vital. His relationship with Stefano is important, as
Stefano becomes his god and his means of escape, depending on how
far that relationship goes. But in any event that’s very important
and the most important relationship when we are seeing him, apart
from the first scene. But then his relationship with Trinculo –
because Trinculo is the person that’s standing in his way, so
that’s very important too!

RE:

Is there any scene or moment that is particularly significant to
the interpretation of your character?

JG:

Not really. I mean there are secretly in my mind various things
that I think are interesting. For example: at the moment, it’s very
interesting that Stefano keeps asking Caliban to lick his feet. Now
that’s a very interesting thing that he’s kept asking to do it. Now
you could go many different ways with that: either you could
constantly lick his feet and be subservient or you could choose not
to lick his feet and it could be him trying to get him to do
something that he doesn’t do. It then begs the question: why does
Caliban keep offering it as a thing and what does that mean about
Caliban’s relationship with Prospero? If he’s only ever been
educated by Prospero does that mean Prospero has had Caliban
licking his feet all the time they’ve been on an island? That
creates a very interesting dynamic. So, these decisions inform [the
interpretation], and that’s something that’s not even a speech.
That’s a moment that is not there on the page. One can skim by
this. But the action of doing it (or not doing it) or the action of
doing it (or not doing it) to Propero and the action, at the end,
of maybe not doing it again, that could inform it, enormously (your
relationships throughout the entire play). And it’s not about
something that we have to settle on now as a piece of business or
blocking, as to whether or not you’re going to use that. But, it
may not be important later on. We may do something very
conventional – it might not be interesting. At the moment, it does
interest me. Precisely, [in the feet licking scene] Stephano keeps
telling Caliban to kneel and I think he repeats it. And then he
sort of stage manages where they’re all going to be. These things
are interesting because that’s where we are in the process at the
moment: exactly how compliant one is being with these different
things. So, that’s an interest at the moment, but it may not be
interesting later. And it has knock-on consequences throughout:
Caliban constantly says, “Thy foot-licker and I will kiss thy
foot,” so it’s clearly something that he does. And it’s a question
of whether or not Prospero made him do it.

RE:

And have you done any specific character work? Looking at voice
or movement for Caliban?

JG:

Well, I’m very restricted by the design. And I use “restricted”
with inverted commas, as I’m also empowered by a lot of design
because I’ve got a very specific costume, which has very specific
consequences. I have a head mask that’s going to limit the amount
of physical facial things I can do and will make quite a strong
visual thing. So, it has a knock-on effect as to how you use your
voice because, if you have a reduced amount of facial expression,
you want to use the expression that you have available in your
voice by using high tones and deep tones and that sort of stuff.
And then physically, because we’re led by costume, we’re [Caliban
is] not a very specific beast. We’re not a fish or a monkey or a
whatever. We’re much more like a kind of marble man. And much
closer to being something more like a devil-type thing. So, I want
the movement to be fairly amorphous and shifting and non-specific:
at moments like a servile dog but at moments otherwise like a king
or Caliban’s concept of that. I wanted to shift very rapidly, as he
does in his speech between how he relates to different characters.
He’s either defying or placating or making himself weak in front of
the stronger characters. So, he shifts around a lot and I want that
to be shifty and I’m playing with that. Specificall, playing with
not necessarily kneeling but making as-good-a-passing-show of
kneeling as one can make without really doing it. So, all these
sorts of ambiguities.

RE:

So, my last question is: what have been the highs and the lows
of the rehearsal process?

JG:

The low was coming in early and discovering that a very, very
strong decision had been taken already as to what Caliban was going
to look like and be. And then the high has been discovering that,
actually, I completely buy it. And I think it’s an absolutely
fantastic opportunity to go somewhere with it that I think is,
actually, truer to the original intention.

Globe regular, James Garnon, talks about his familiarity with the play and his role. He also discusses how Caliban is so open to interpretation, as the other characters describe him so differently in the play.]]>2013-03-20T00:00:00+00:002013-03-20T00:00:00+00:00http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discovery-space/adopt-an-actor/archive/caliban-played-by-james-garnon/pre-rehearsalJames Garnonhttp://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discovery-space/adopt-an-actor/archive/caliban-played-by-james-garnon

Hayley Bartley:

Welcome to the 2013 Adopt an Actor podcast series. My
name’s Hayley Bartley and I’m here talking to James Garnon who
plays Caliban in the upcoming Globe production of The
Tempest.

So, my first question for you is: how familiar were you with the
play, The Tempest?

James Garnon:

Quite. I studied English literature at university – so I
certainly read it at university, but only from an academic point of
view. Pretty sure I wrote a finals paper on it, even. Then my –
pretty much my first job out of drama school, I did The
Tempest at the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company], Michael Boyd’s
production. It was on at the Roundhouse. I played Francisco –
whatever he’s called. Very small part, just one little speech and
just followed the court people around. That was my first job, 10
years ago. And last year, I played Caliban for BBC Radio 3, which
Jeremy Mortimer directed. So, I won’t say I know it brilliantly but
I do know it. Of all the Shakespeare plays, I know it better than
all the others that I haven’t really been in yet, if you see what I
mean.

HB:

Yes! No, I think that’s – you’re fairly familiar with it.

JG:

Fairly familiar with it, yeah.

HB:

So, what were your initial impressions of the play then?

JG:

It’s a weird play in that every time you come to it, every time
you look at it you see something different. Sort of like the island
itself in The Tempest. It’s just so wonderfully bleak. You
can’t quite work out what’s going on and the moment you think you
understand what’s going on something else occurs to you.

HB:

So, what about your initial impressions of your character
then?

JG:

Caliban is like the rest of the play: he’s almost impossible to
pin down. Not only because every other character describes him
differently at different points. Propero constantly refers to him
as a devil or a demi-devil or the child of a witch. Things like
that, as well as calling him a slave. The court people that he
encounters: Trinculo keeps referring to him as a fish and that’s
echoed by one of the other court people later on who also calls him
a sort of fish, like it may have something to do with his smell.
Stephano – after Caliban decides that Stephano is a god – he
constantly calls him the "mooncalf". Which is sort of a game,
contradictory: how can you be a calf and a devil AND a fish? And
then he’s constantly referred to as a "monster", which doesn’t
necessarily mean what we mean by monster; it kind of just means
something rather extraordinary. One other character calls him
"deformed". Propero says he’s disproportionate in his manners as he
is in his shape, so there’s clearly some sort of deformity. But
what he is, is never explicit. It’s rather like the island: you
can’t tell where we are because there are lions on it or wolves and
bears but at the same time there’s a – you know, Caliban is
constantly bringing in wood for Propero, but Trinculo says there’s
no trees or bushes anywhere on the island. In effect, it works
brilliantly as a radio play, where the audience have to bring the
images – trying to decide what kind of values is tricky. The only
thing you can do is look at how he operates within the structure of
the play and I think he is deliberately there to mirror (at
different points) the other characters. It’s interesting that his
first entrance is stage managed by Propero and immediately precedes
the arrival of Ferdinand. So, Caliban has clearly been set up in
some way as a mirror to Ferdinand. But he’s also a mirror to
Propero himself, in that he used to be king of the island and now
he’s not. He mirrors Antonio in his desire to overthrow Propero and
then also in the little plot to murder Propero he echoes. So,
there’s endless echoes that he’s being used to do. So, you could
argue that he’s the baser parts of our nature; you could argue that
he’s a kind of devil in that [he represents] the evil parts of our
nature; or he’s an animal or a savage. So, those are initial
impressions.

HB:

Pretty open then. A difficult task for a designer and director
to make it distinct.

JG:

I think this is the fear constantly that anything you decide to
do, if you’re not careful, wipes out other possibilities. That’s
the problem. And they’re all there bobbing along, provided you
don’t stamp one out. So we already are discussing – the designer
already has a very strong idea of what he wants to do. That
terrifies me, to a point, because I’m scared that other things will
fall by. But I’m equally conscious that anything one decided to do
would damage any other reading. Either, one holds off, holds off,
holds off, holds off and tries to sort of stitch something together
out of all the disparate strands or one just goes with some very,
very positive choices and then tries to keep the other bits
alive.

HB:

You’ve mentioned you’ve done The Tempest before, but
what other Shakespeare have you performed?

JG:

I think this is my eighth season here [at the Globe] – something
like that. In which time, I’ve done other Shakespeare’s. I’ve
played Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet; I’ve played
Parolles in All’s Well That Ends Well; I’ve played Macbeth
here for the education department; I’ve played – oh god, I can’t
even remember! But outside of here, I’ve played Puck in
Midsummer Night’s Dream; I’ve played Hamlet for The
Factory; I’ve played Antonio in Merchant of Venice.

HB:

And recently, of course, you’ve just been in the...

JG:

Recently, yes, I just played Richmond and the Duchess of York in
Richard III and then we revived Twelfth Night,
which I did here in 2004, maybe? We revived that – did that again.
[Editor's note: the original production was in 2002]

HB:

So, you know the Globe and you know Shakespeare?

JG:

I know the Globe and I know Shakespeare a bit, yeah. This one’s
going to be interesting – they’re always interesting, you know? And
I don’t, you know – it’s actually harder when you really do know
something, or imagine that you know something, because you come
with preconceptions. In the same way it’s easier to come and see a
Shakespeare play if you haven’t read it and don’t know anything
about it, on one level, because you just respond to it. If you
bring a lot of baggage you can often get in the way.

HB:

And what about any preparation for the role before rehearsals?
Any sort of research?

JG:

Yes. I mean I certainly read the play and certainly have a look
at what’s being said but I don’t have a methodology. I don’t really
believe in going through the play, finding what everybody says
about you or finding anything that you say because I think anything
that any other character says about you can be taken entirely with
a pinch of salt because they could be wrong or lying, you know? If
I do research, I do research in as much as I want to know more than
the director about my character; I want to know more about my
character than the designer; I want to know more about my character
than anybody who can ask me a question about it. If only to ensure
that what I’m doing is justified and strong. But then, as I talk
about it, I’m also revealing to myself that I have done quite a lot
of work and quite a lot of thinking and I always do.

HB:

So the answer is: I’m denying research but I do it so that I
know more than anyone else about my character?

JG:

It’s exactly the same as saying "did you do any revision for
your A-levels" and you go, "no, I didn’t do any work".

NB:

And you come out with an A*.

JG:

Yeah, exactly! And you pretend that you haven’t – that it was
all just instinctive.